Writ (website)

Last updated
Writ
Available inEnglish
Current statusOnline

Writ is a legal commentary website on the topic of the law of the United States hosted by FindLaw. The website is no longer adding content, having published its last entry in August 2011. Before then, Writ published at least one new column by one of its regular columnists every business day, and frequently posted a second column by a guest columnist. The regular columnists were all notable attorneys. Almost all contributors are law professors; some are former law clerks from the U.S. Supreme Court; some are past or present federal prosecutors; one is a former Counsel to the President; one is a novelist, and one is the current director of the Terrorism and Counterterrorism Program of Human Rights Watch. The guest columnists also tend to be law professors or seasoned attorneys. When the website was still producing new content, columnists commented both on notable ongoing court cases and recent court decisions, as well as on current events.

Contents

Writ also published occasional book reviews, on books of both legal and more general interest; the book reviewers were likewise academically inclined attorneys.

Writ is free, and maintains all of its material from its inception in a free archive.

Although Writ is known mainly among legal circles, its columnists tend to be prolific authors who reach a broad audience. Many have published books as well as frequent articles and op-eds in newspapers and magazines such as The New York Times , The Washington Post , The Atlantic Monthly , U.S. News & World Report , The Los Angeles Times , The Chicago Tribune , and Slate . One Writ columnist, Marci Hamilton, was the first guest on The Daily Show in its new studio in 2005; columnist Edward Lazarus also appeared on The Daily Show in 2006.

Writ is available online [1] and, after an extended period of inactivity, actively publishes new articles as of 2022.

Writ's regular columnists

Books by Writ columnists

Related Research Articles

Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that established the principle of judicial review, meaning that American courts have the power to strike down laws and statutes they find to violate the Constitution of the United States. Decided in 1803, Marbury is regarded as the single most important decision in American constitutional law. It established that the U.S. Constitution is actual law, not just a statement of political principles and ideals. It also helped define the boundary between the constitutionally separate executive and judicial branches of the federal government.

Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision ruling that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for people of color were equal in quality to those of white people, a doctrine that came to be known as "separate but equal". The decision legitimized the many state "Jim Crow laws" re-establishing racial segregation that had been passed in the American South after the end of the Reconstruction era in 1877. Such legally enforced segregation in the South lasted into the 1960s.

Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996), is a landmark United States Supreme Court case dealing with sexual orientation and state laws. It was the first Supreme Court case to address gay rights since Bowers v. Hardwick (1986), when the Court had held that laws criminalizing sodomy were constitutional.

In the English-American common law, quo warranto is a prerogative writ issued by a court which orders someone to show what authority they have for exercising some right, power, or franchise they claim to hold. The writ of quo warranto still exists in the United States, although it is uncommon, but it has been abolished in England and Wales. Quo warranto is also used, with slightly different effect, in the Philippines.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cornell Law School</span> Private law school in Ithaca, New York

Cornell Law School is the law school of Cornell University, a private Ivy League university in Ithaca, New York.

A writ of assistance is a written order issued by a court instructing a law enforcement official, such as a sheriff or a tax collector, to perform a certain task. Historically, several types of writs have been called "writs of assistance". Most often, a writ of assistance is "used to enforce an order for the possession of lands". When used to evict someone from real property, such a writ is also called a writ of restitution or a writ of possession. In the area of customs, writs of assistance date from Colonial times. They were issued by the Court of Exchequer to help customs officials search for smuggled goods. These writs were called "writs of assistance" because they called upon sheriffs, other officials, and loyal subjects to "assist" the customs official in carrying out his duties.

<i>Harvard Law Review</i> Academic journal

The Harvard Law Review is a law review published by an independent student group at Harvard Law School. According to the Journal Citation Reports, the Harvard Law Review's 2015 impact factor of 4.979 placed the journal first out of 143 journals in the category "Law". It also ranks first in other ranking systems of law reviews. It is published monthly from November through June, with the November issue dedicated to covering the previous year's term of the Supreme Court of the United States.

The Yale Law Journal (YLJ) is a student-run law review affiliated with the Yale Law School. Published continuously since 1891, it is the most widely known of the eight law reviews published by students at Yale Law School. The journal is one of the most cited legal publications in the United States and usually generates the highest number of citations per published article.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Akhil Reed Amar</span> American legal scholar

Akhil Reed Amar is an American legal scholar known for his expertise in U.S. constitutional law. He is the Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University, where he is a leading scholar of originalism, the U.S. Bill of Rights, and criminal procedure.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edward R. Becker</span> American judge (1933–2006)

Edward Roy Becker was a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

Vikram David Amar is an American legal scholar focusing on constitutional law, federal courts, and civil and criminal procedure. In August 2015, he became dean of the University of Illinois College of Law and the Iwan Foundation Professor of Law. He returned to the University of California, Davis School of Law as a Distinguished Professor of Law in 2023.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Procedures of the Supreme Court of the United States</span>

The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. The procedures of the Court are governed by the U.S. Constitution, various federal statutes, and its own internal rules. Since 1869, the Court has consisted of one chief justice and eight associate justices. Justices are nominated by the president, and with the advice and consent (confirmation) of the U.S. Senate, appointed to the Court by the president. Once appointed, justices have lifetime tenure unless they resign, retire, or are removed from office.

Michael C. Dorf is an American law professor and a scholar of U.S. constitutional law. He is the Robert S. Stevens Professor of Law at Cornell Law School. In addition to constitutional law, Professor Dorf has taught courses in civil procedure and federal courts. He has written or edited three books, including No Litmus Test: Law Versus Politics in the Twenty-First Century, and Constitutional Law Stories. He is also a columnist for Findlaw.com and a regular contributor to The American Prospect. Dorf is a former law clerk to Justice Anthony Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edward Lazarus</span> American historian (born 1959)

Edward Lazarus is an American lawyer and writer. He currently serves as General Counsel for Sonos. From 2013 to 2018, Lazarus was general counsel and chief strategy officer for the Tribune Corporation, following its exit from bankruptcy. On January 16, 2017, he was named by President Barack Obama to serve on the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. He also served as Chief of Staff of the Federal Communications Commission from June 2008 to January 2012. He went to the FCC from the Los Angeles office of the law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, where he was the head of litigation for the renowned firm.

Julie Cope Hilden was an American novelist and lawyer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marci Hamilton</span>

Marci Ann Hamilton is the chief executive officer and academic director at Child USA, an interdisciplinary think tank to prevent child abuse and neglect. She is also a scholar of constitutional law and Robert A. Fox Leadership Program Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Practice at University of Pennsylvania with dual appointments to Department of Political Science in Penn's College and Graduate School and Penn's Law School. She is an advocate for the enforcement of the Establishment Clause of the United States Constitution. Hamilton also promotes adequate protection for minors, individuals and landowners who suffer as a result of actions which are claimed to be constitutionally protected on religious grounds. Hamilton is critical of provisions within Federal and State Religious Freedom Restoration Acts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Brest</span> American legal scholar (born c. 1940)

Paul Brest is an American legal scholar who is a former president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and was dean of Stanford Law School. He is credited with coining the name originalism to describe a particular approach to interpreting the United States Constitution.

Henry Melvin Hart Jr. (1904–1969) was an American legal scholar. He was an influential member of the Harvard Law School faculty from 1932 until his death in 1969.

James Frank Simon is an American legal historian who served as dean of New York Law School from 1983 to 1992.

Sherry F. Colb was an American legal scholar who served as the inaugural C.S. Wong Professor of Law at Cornell Law School from 2019 until her death in 2022. She was best known for her scholarship on gender equality and animal rights.

References